Copyright 1996,1997,1998,1999,2000 by Magic Dragon Multimedia.
All rights reserved Worldwide. May not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered, in its
entirety, and without charge.We examine both works of fiction and important contemporaneous works on
non-fiction which set the context for ecological Science Fiction and Fantasy.There are 48 hotlinks here to authors, magazines, films,
or television items elsewhere in the Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide or
beyond.
Most recently updated: 25 Sep 2000 [28 Kilobytes]Related web page on
themes such as Clones, Mutants, Intelligent Animals, Life Undersea, and
The End of the World may be found at:
If You Like This, You'll Like That
[warning: very long text page, about half a megabyte, may load slowly]
To find more books by these authors, see:
Science Fiction AuthorsTwo leaders in Science Fiction explorations of Ecology and Biology
are Frank Herbert ("Dune"), and Joan Slonczewski. Frank has, sadly,
passed away (or been recycled). Joan is currently a Professor of
Biology at Kenyon College, and is very effectively using Science Fiction
books and films as tools for teaching Biology at the college level.
Other sources of information on this web page are noted or hotlinked.
Some questions we study include:

How do living organisms grow and reproduce? (Tribbles, TV: Star Trek)

What forces shape the evolution of species, including our own?
Could humans evolve into something very different? (novel: Galapagos,
by Kurt Vonnegut)

What kind of planet is needed for living things and ecosystems to evolve?
(novel: Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson)

Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials,
by Wayne Douglas Barlowe [New York: Workman Publishers, 1979]
"In his classic guide, Wayne Douglas Barlowe's brilliant portraits bring
to life 50 aliens from science fiction literature:
Larry Niven's Thrint and his Puppeteer, Arthur C. Clarke's Overlord,
Frank Herbert's Steersman, Robert Silverburg's Sulidor and more.
Humanoids, insectoids, reptillians-even protoplasmic, gaseous, and
crystalline life forms-are all faithfully and naturalistically
depicted so that you can now visualize what could only before be imagined."

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells [New York: Bantam Books, 1895]
"When the Time Traveler courageously stepped out of his machine for
the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700 -- and
everything had changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures
seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveler
thought he could study these marvelous beings -- unearth their
secret and then return to his own time-until he discovered that
his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen."

Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut
[New York: Dell Publishing, 1985]
"Galapagos takes the reader back one million years, to A.D. 1986.
A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary
journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on
the Galapagos islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new,
and totally different human race. Here, America's master satirist looks
at our world and shows us all that is sadly, madly awry-and all that is
worth saving."

Dune, by Frank Herbert [New York: Ace Books, 1965]
"Set on the desert Planet Arrakis, a world more awesome than any other
in literature, Dune begins the story of the man known as Muad'dib-and
of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition humankind's most ancient
and unattainable dream..."

The Children Star, by Joan Slonczewski
[Analog magazine serial; New York: Tor Books, 1999]
"The Children Star -- A world so alien that only children can be
lifeshaped to live there. The Children Star features mind-bending
genetic engineering, and tire-shaped creatures that evolved with
triplex DNA and exotic amino acids. And which of the many circular-
shaped life forms is actually an intelligent species with its own
plans for the human colonists?"

Dawn, by Octavia Butler [New York: Warner Books, 1987]
"Xenogenesis: The birth of something new-and foreign.
Lilith Iyapo awoke from a centuries long sleep...and found herself
aboard the vast living spaceship of the Oankali.
Alien creatures covered in writhing tentacles, the Oankali had saved
every surviving human from a dying, ruined Earth. They healed the
planet, cured cancer, increased human strength and disease resistance,
and were now ready to help Lilith lead her people back to the Earth.
But for a price. For the Oankali were genetic engineers.
DNA manipulators. Gene traders. They planned to give us their alienness.
They planned to take our humanity. They planned to interbreed.
And there was no way to stop them."

Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson
[New York: Bantam Books, 1993]
"For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren, desolate landscape of
the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come
and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of
one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.
John Boone, Maya Toitovna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead
a mission whose ultimate goal is to give Mars an Earth-like atmosphere.
They will place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect
light to the planet's surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps
will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers
in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous
vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries,
loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces -- for there are
those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed."

Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
[New York: Ballantine Books, 1990]
"An astonishing technique for recovering
and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now, one of mankind's most
thrilling fantasies has come true. Creatures extinct for eons now roam
Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery and all
the world can visit them-for a price. Until something goes wrong..."

The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
[New York: Ballantine Books, 1969]
"What if there was a virus so lethal, it
could kill people as quickly as they took a breath? What if it spared some
people from instant death...but drove them hopelessly insane instead? What
if the swiftest acting, deadliest, virus ever known to humankind could
be spread, by no more than a gust of wind, from the remote desert site
of its first massacre to the busiest cities in America...and the world?
What, if anything, could stop it?"

The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, >by Larry Gonick and Mark Wheelis
[New York: Harper Perennial, 1991]
"Have you ever asked yourself: Are spliced genes the same as mended Levis?
Watson and Crick? Aren't they a team of British detectives?
Plant sex? Can they do that?
Is genetic mutation the name of one of those heavy metal bands?
Asparagine? Which of the four food groups is that in?
Then you need "The Cartoon Guide to Genetics"
to explain the important concepts of classical
and modern genetics."

The Beast, Peter Benchley. 1991. New York: Random House.
Coral reef ecology is disturbed and a giant squid picks man as
his new prey.

Blade Runner, The, Alan E. Nourse. 1974. New York: D. McKay & Co.
In a future of increased human longevity, doctors
struggle to cope with problems of overpopulation,
hereditary disorders, and virulent new diseases. FVA
[The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide says:
actually, the title is used in a film based on Philip K. Dick's 'Do
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"; see below]

Boys from Brazil, The, Ira Levin. 1976. New York: Random House.
Dr. Mengele attempts to produce cloned copies of
Adolf Hitler, but in order to do so he must reproduce the
environmental factors which made Hitler the evil genius that he was;
deals intelligently with the fashionable subject of cloning. FVA

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. 1946. New York: Harper and Bros.
Reproductive technology as imagined in the 30's -
this famous satire about a technologically stratified world
six centuries in the future helped define 20th-century humanity's view of
itself. FVA

Clan of the Cave Bear, The, Jean Auel. 1980. New York: Crown.
Human evolution at the level of the
Cro-Magnon/Neanderthal junction. FVA

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick. 1968.
Garden City: Doubleday. After World War Terminus, the
Earth is an underpopulated wasteland where people keep electronic
animals as pets; killer androids come from off-Earth where
most economic activity takes place. Filmed as The Blade Runner.

Dorsai, Gordon R. Dickson. 1976. New York: Dow Books.
Themes of human development and the purpose of life; originally
published as The Genetic General.

Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey. 1968. New York: Ballantine.
A well crafted tale of a planet threatened by spores from space
which can only be defeated by taming fire-breathing dragons;
first of Dragons of Pern series.

Dune, Frank Herbert. 1965. Philadelphia: Chilton.
Planetary environment and system of cultures much like that which would be
present on Earth if Earth had no water. FVA

Fantastic Voyage, Isaac Asimov. 1988. New York: Doubleday and Co.
Microminiaturization is used to explore the human
body; written originally as a screenplay for the
movie of the same name. FVA

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley. 1980 (1818). James Kinsley and M.K. Joseph eds.,
Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Gothic horror story about a medical student who creates an
artificial man;
first English science fiction novel. FVA

Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut. 1985. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence.
An observant ghost haunts the Galapagos
Islands for a million years and watches as the descendants
of a few marooned humans devolve into a new species -
furry, finned, and small of brain; a sadly funny Darwinian fable.

Genesis Quest, Donald Moffitt. 1986. New York: Ballantine.
A species of intelligent starfish in another galaxy use genetic
engineering to recreate the extinct human race.

West of Eden, Harry Harrison. 1984. New York: Bantam Books.
Imagine a world where dinosaurs did not die but survived to
develop their own civilization; their culture comes into
conflict with an emergent human race.

"An excellent resource for short summaries of works of science fiction is:
The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction,
David Pringle. 1990. Grafton Books, London; Collins Publishing Group."
"Numerous anthologies of science fiction short stories are available
in libraries and science fiction magazines have many interesting
short pieces. Omni, Amazing Stories, Fantasy in Science, and
Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact are four that are recommended."
"This is by no means a comprehensive list of science fiction that
could be used at the secondary level. Hopefully, teachers will use this as a
springboard to generate their own annotated bibliographies that might also
include favorite biological literature (books, poems, stories, and essays)
and film resources that are not science fiction."
"A sample writing exercise that might be done after students have read
'The Andromeda Strain':
Support the truth of these quotes as demonstrated by events in the book:
"The survival value of human intelligence has never been
satisfactorily demonstrated."
"Increasing vision is increasingly expensive."
In the acknowledgments Crichton states, "We can expect more crises on
the pattern of Andromeda." How much truth exists in the novel?
What evidence do you see to support his prediction?
(Thanks to Susan Terry for these questions.)

Miscellaneous ecological novels:

BLOOM by Wil McCarthy
[New York, Del Rey, 1998, paperback, 303 pages, cover art by Rick Berry]
[A New York Times Notable Book]
A science fiction book featuring nanotechnology.
Reporter John Strasheim, Captain Wallich, bioanalyst Renata Baucum,
and the rest of the small crew of the space ship Louis Pasteur
travel on a dangerous mission from Jupiter's moon of Ganymede
and the Immunity, visiting the Gladholders in the asteroid belt,
to the inner solar system, including Earth, which has been taken
over by the feared Mycosystem.
From the back cover:
"Mycora: technogenic life. Fast-reproducing, fast-mutating, and
endlessly voracious. In the year 2106, these microscopic machine/
creatures have escaped their creators to populate the inner solar
system with a wild, deadly ecology all their own, pushing the tattered
remnants of humanity out into the cold and dark of the outer planets.
Even huddled beneath the ice of Jupiter's moons, protected by a
defensive system known as the Immunity, survivors face the constant
risk of mycospores finding their way to the warmth and brightness
inside the habitats, resulting in a calamitous 'bloom'"
But the human race still has a trick or two up its sleeve:
In a ship specially designed to penetrate the deadly Mycosystem,
seven astronauts are about to embark on mankind's boldest venture yet --
the perilous journey home to infected Earth.
Yet it is in these remote conditions, against a virtually
omnipotent foe, that we discover how human nature plays the greatest
role in humanity's future."
Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club
SCIENCE FICTION BOOK SELECTION

Miscellaneous Biological novels/films:

Fantastic Voyage, film based on novel by Isaac Asimov,
where an (impossibly) miniaturized submarine
explores the interior of a living human body.

Them, film: radiation makes ants grow (impossibly) large.

The Thing, film (and remake of film) from short novel "Who Goes There"
by John Campbell; an alien creature terrifies antarctic expolors
with its ability to change shape. How do you know that your partner is
not an alien morphed to resemble a human?

Copyright 1996,1997,1998,1999,2000 by Magic Dragon Multimedia.
All rights reserved Worldwide. May not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that it is transmitted unaltered, in its
entirety, and without charge.